Well, if you’re bold enough – give it away for FREE! Now, I’m not completely mad so my suggestion is this:

Tell your customers that whatever they buy from you today, they can have for free tomorrow! You may want to run it on one of your quieter days, say Wednesday is quiet for you, then you might want to call it “Free Food Wednesday” and offer it only on Wednesdays which would mean that your customer would have their normal fare say this Wednesday and pay for it as normal, then they would keep their receipt and simply re-produce it next Wednesday to get the value of their receipt for free!

If you have even a 65% gross margin (and you should have a 70% gross margin, but that’s another story), then all you will be doing is reducing your margin on the two purchases combined to 30% which is exactly the same as doing 2 for the price of one but it allows you to communicate a much stronger message to your customer (and your competitors customer too!).

Remember, it’s not enough just to provide the offer, you have to communicate it properly for it to be successful. I suggest that you get a good graphic designer to do a quality poster concentrating on the word FREE and then display the posters everywhere you can inside and outside your premises and you can also use the poster artwork on your facebook & four square pages.

So, there you go – just like the food I’m suggesting you sell for FREE, this idea is FREE too. Good luck with it.

Some “industry experts” are predicting that in the short to medium term up to 25% of businesses in our sector will close. Well, that’s the bad news. The good news is that “if” they’re right (and that’s a big if!), at least 75% of us will still be here when we get to the other end of this recession. That means, despite all the doom and gloom and even taking the worst predictions of the apocalyptic industry commentators as gospel 3 out of every 4 of us will survive.

So, make a choice. Will you be one of the 3 who survive or will you be the one in every 4 who doesn’t. If your choice is to survive, get busy now. Survival is an activity that requires your complete involvement. it won’t happen without incredible effort on your part and that effort needs to be planned, strategic and aligned to the outcomes that you desire for your business.

So my request to you today is that you would choose to survive and that you would support that choice with an entertainment led, event specific, commercially viable plan for your business and that most of all you would get busy making your survival happen now.

The way your employees feel about their job and their workplace determines how motivated they are. There is a clear link between job satisfaction and productivity.

Job satisfaction depends partly on tangible rewards – for example, how much a person is paid and what benefits they receive. However, job satisfaction also depends on the culture of an organisation. This means the things that make your business distinctive and make the people who work there proud to do so.

You can motivate people with:

• responsibility – perhaps allowing employees from different departments to join together in a strategic planning group
• high-quality training and development – eg encouragement to study for professional qualifications
• an ‘open door’ culture in which managers are approachable
• authentic management and leadership whose behaviour is consistent and genuine
• respect for a good work-life balance – eg offering the opportunity for flexible working
• fairness at work, including promoting equality and diversity
• proactive and regular communication
• regular appraisal and positive feedback – restating business objectives and recognising your staff’s contribution
• requests for feedback, either in person or via staff surveys, on how employees feel about their roles, the support they get, and improvements to the business
• the chance to socialise with colleagues at organised events
• recognition and reward for ideas or competitive intelligence

One clever bar promotion tactic that sparks sales and interest is the designation of certain activities for specific nights of the week. These could include themes such as karaoke, ladies’ nights, etc. Good usage of flyers and posters can work well to provide sufficient exposure for these events.

Using promotional items from beverage companies can enable bars to retain customers as well as attract new ones. Promotional items may include t-shirts, shot glasses, key chains, hats, bottle openers, and other items that consumers retain for extended periods of time. Also, by partnering with beverage companies on higher-level promotional events, bars and clubs can receive significant additional exposure with funding usually covering promotional costs.